


The Getaway

by BrightBlackTrees



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, And honestly so does Ben, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Childhood Trauma, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Smut, F/M, Finn knows what's up, Fluff and Angst, Fuckbuddies, Happy Ending, Idiots in Love, It's not running from your troubles if you get caught in traffic, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, Mutual Pining, POV Rey (Star Wars), Praise Kink, Rey 'he's not my boyfriend' Jonhson, Rey Needs A Hug (Star Wars), Rey is the epitome of a pillow princess and frankly Ben is here for it, Rey needs to chill, Snowed In, Someone serve them a Brene Brown Ted Talk already, but for how long?, pretending not to be in love, yes this is a christmas fic believe it or not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:15:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28302918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrightBlackTrees/pseuds/BrightBlackTrees
Summary: There was another short silence on the line before Finn said sagely, "This city's a planet all on its own, honey: it sucks you in like gravity. It's alright if you want to just float for a while... People can be that way too."---Rey needs a break - from London, from work, from people... and from hernot-boyfriend, Ben Solo.A last minute holiday to the middle of nowhere (or more specifically, Wales) seems like the perfect solution to get away from the mire of every day life, even if it does mean she'll be spending Christmas alone.What she doesn't expect is to be followed.Or: Angst, comfort, smut, repeat (but make it festive.) You know the drill, kids.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Poe Dameron & Finn, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 16
Kudos: 127





	The Getaway

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, Reylos!  
> Thanks for helping me through this runaway train of a year. I have so much love for this fandom <3  
> I started writing this one shot last December intending it to be nothing more than a fluffy drabble... needless to say, these two had other plans.  
> I've also listed the songs mentioned in the piece in the end notes!  
> Please enjoy x

In December, the sun usually began its descent beyond the horizon at around three in the afternoon. That was why Rey had set off on her journey just a little after ten o'clock that morning. The roads were fit-to-burst with stop-start traffic thanks to high levels of festive congestion, and it took her longer than usual to get out of London - which was no mean feat to begin with. Not that she tended to leave the city an awful lot these days, especially by car; if she had to get away on business, she almost always took the train so she could work through the commute. But as it was the Christmas break and she had no deadlines to fill until January, this wasn't a necessary requirement and besides, there were no trains that could take her where she needed to go.

She wasn't exactly an enthusiastic motorist. She knew people who loved driving, who thrived on it, who used it as a relaxation method or even passed up the opportunity to drink at parties to act as designated driver because they liked it so much - masochists, in her opinion - but she had never been one of those people. Today, it was a necessary evil. It had taken her three attempts to pass her test and now whenever she got behind the wheel, she always aired on the side of caution – better to be safe than sorry, afterall. She couldn't stand people who exceeded the speed limit or accelerated towards sharp corners.

Today, she was taking it steady for a handful of reasons: firstly because she had never travelled this route before or scarcely one this lengthy, and secondly, around the time she slowed to pay a toll at the Severn Bridge, it had started snowing. She had felt little flecks of cold landing gently on the skin of her outstretched hand as she held her card to the contactless pad and peered nervously up at the sprawling ivory sky. She'd never driven in snow before and while she was one of the dwindling few these days who rejoiced at its arrival, she didn't relish the prospect of attempting to navigate winding country roads covered in black ice. She understood now why people balked at the idea.

Sighing and glancing quickly in her rear view mirror, she reached down to press the power button on her stereo before punching the AUX switch. Her phone, which she had wired up to the radio before she’d set off, came to life from its resting place in the drinks holder in the centre console, flashing up a lock screen of the last song she had listened to on Spotify. She quickly tapped play and the speaker flooded with the sound of droning guitar. A woman's voice crooned at her from the built-in stereo:  _ 'I wish he was my boyfriend... I'd love him to the very end but instead he's just a friend... _ '

“Ugh!” Rey recoiled in horror, sticking her tongue out theatrically. “No, no, no...” she muttered, jabbing the  _ Next _ button so the song skipped. 

_ 'I do my hair toss, check my nails, baby, how you feelin'?' _ sang the next voice and she whistled her relief.

“Better now, thank you, Lizzo,” she answered the singer. She needed uplifting, not depressing. It had been a long journey, with more than enough time to dwell on things she'd rather not and feel good music was one of the best tried and tested distractions. She sang along cheerily, unable to resist pouting in her rear view mirror and flicking her wrist as she went, in what admittedly must have looked like the world's cringiest Beyonce impression.

She started violently as her ringtone cut through the music, resounding alarmingly loud through the speakers and causing her to almost let go of the wheel.

“ _ Stopstopstop _ ...” she muttered, teeth gritted as she scrabbled one handed around the drinks holder, trying to end the call while still keeping her eyes on the road. Throwing the most furtive of glances downward, she finally managed to tap  _ 'Decline' _ and the incessant ringing ceased as her music thankfully returned.

Her brow puckered together as she wondered who had been calling. She definitely knew of _one_ _person_ who might be trying to reach her – but that was impossible, she'd blocked _that_ number. Chewing her lower lip, she glanced briefly down at the screen glowing up at her. The notification read:

Today, 14:36

(1) Missed called from Finn

She grimaced. 

So it had been her best friend trying to get hold of her.

Mentally begging him to please not kill her, she made a note to call him back later on, anxiety curling in her stomach. He was usually more of a serial texter than a caller and she had a feeling, though she prayed it was misguided, that his attempt at contact hadn’t simply been for a casual chat.

She glanced up at a road sign and realised her junction was about to come up, provided her directions were sound. She swallowed and tried to push thoughts of home out of her head. This was supposed to be a nice little break, a winter getaway, a chance to spend some quality time with herself for a change.

A small, vindictive voice in her head snickered to itself then; she had already spent a great deal of her life alone and at this rate, she would be doing a lot more of it.

Shaking her head angrily at these thoughts, she turned the stereo up louder and pressed a little forcefully down on her indicator as she prepared to take her exit.

*

In the dimming light, the supermarket car park was washed in a pretty miserable greyscale and if not for the garish red and blue fairy lights decorating the outside of the large shop she had just vacated, the scene would have been one quite in opposition to that of Christmas cheer. She had bagged a few essentials: tooth paste (which, naturally, she had forgotten), a few vegetables, instant noodles, instant coffee, assorted canned goods, chilli dark chocolate (her favourite), a crate of six bottles of red wine and a twenty pack of Marlboro Golds (which she had almost choked at the price of but that was inflation, she supposed.) She hadn't smoked properly since she was twenty but it was the holidays and she felt she had the right to indulge herself, given the week she’d had. The wine was for similar purposes.

Nibbling at her thumbnail, she took an anxious little inhale and stared at Finn's name in her contacts list. What was she going to say to him? Would he be annoyed that she’d left without a word? Angry even? Or would he understand once she’d explained the situation? Maybe he didn't even know she was gone?

Well, she thought, no point in putting the conversation off, and besides, if  _ he _ had up and left all of a sudden and  _ she’d  _ found out, she'd be worried sick about him. As her best and most loyal friend, she owed him an explanation at the very least, didn’t she?

“Okay,” she sighed, placing the phone to her ear. “Prepare to be reamed.” 

As the dial tone chirruped at her, she gazed out of the steadily steaming window at the passing shoppers, wrapped up in woolen scarves and hats. Her eyes fell on a young girl making skid marks in the snow which had really started to settle now; the girl’s mother must have called out to her because she glanced back for a moment before grinning widely and skipping towards her parents, taking her father's gloved hand in her own as the mother pushed along a brimming shopping trolley which threatened to derail itself on the ice.

A voice said into her ear, “Rey?”

Rey winced immediately. She could tell by Finn’s tone that she was kind of in trouble. He sounded concerned - and not a little bitchy, in her opinion, but that was just how he got when he was worried.

“Hey,” she said in her best impression of nonchalance.

“Are you okay?” The sass was already so evident in his tone but she was prepared for that.

“I'm fine.” She didn't bother to ask how he was as she knew he wouldn't respond.

“Yeh? Where are you?” It sounded like his lips were pursed.

“I went out of town,” she said this slowly, not wanting to give him too much information.

“No shit, I've been trying to hit you for hours.” He had. She had received several more missed calls from him since the first. “Tell me you’re not driving right now?” He added the last part sharply.

“No, of course not.”

“Good. Where  _ are _ you?”

She weighed her next words carefully.

“Not in London.”

“Alright, whatever,” he snapped and Rey ground her jaw, annoyed at his attitude which frankly she wasn't in the mood for. “Look, if you want to go on a little impromptu Christmas getaway, be my guest, boo, happy times. Just go ahead and let me know first. And you know what you might want to do? Is tell your fucking boyfriend about it too, because he came hammering on the front door in the middle of the afternoon and frankly, I was fucking busy.”

Rey held her breath for a minute to steady her anger. So  _ he _ had been looking for her after all, had actually pestered her flatmate for information? What an absolute  _ - _

“Are you listening to me?” he asked sharply.

“Yes, I hear you, Finn.”

There was a pause on the line where she could hear the slow rhythm of his breathing.

“What happened?” he said, voice was much gentler than before, like he'd had to get the pent up worry off his chest before remembering to act like a caring friend.

“We had a fight.”

“Okay. What else is new?”

“What do you mean 'what else is new'?” she groused, affronted.

“You guys are all fire and passion, right? You’re always bickering, you know, in a foreplay kind of way.”

Frowning, she chose to side-step that little minefield of generalisation.

“This was a big one, a real one.”

“What about?”

“I don't want to talk about it, Finn.” She surprised herself with that; usually, there was nothing she felt she couldn't tell him, her first and best friend. This time though, it felt like too much, too soon - for now at least. “I’ll explain another time maybe but now... I just needed to get away from London.”

There was another short silence on the line before he said sagely, “This city's a planet all on its own, honey: it sucks you in like gravity. It's alright if you want to just float for a while.”

She snorted lightly. “Is that an instagram caption you memorized?”

“Fuck off,” he teased before his tone turned serious. “People can be that way too,” he added, the axefall, making her stomach flip a little. She gulped down a sudden lump in her throat and took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly.

“I'm fine, Finn. Honestly,” she insisted, really trying to make him believe it, make  _ herself _ believe it. “He... he wasn't a dick when he came round, was he?”

“You know what he's like,” her friend said coolly. “The perfect gentleman.” It was evident from his voice that he was being facetious.

“I'll kill him,” she muttered savagely.

“What you’ll  _ do _ is take some time for yourself, enjoy your mini break in the fucking Lake Disctrict or some whatever it is you’re doing, then you'll come back here and you'll fix things.” It was half a prediction, half an order. Rey smiled in spite of herself.

“I’m in Wales actually.”

“Oh, honey, it really was a bad fight, wasn’t it?”

“Did he shout at you?” she asked, ignoring his jibe.

“He nearly knocked the door down-”

“ _ Mother- _ ”

“- and then he asked if I knew where you were, which clearly I didn't, and then he apologised and asked me to let him know if I heard from you. Which I will  _ not _ do, by the way, though I did offer to help look in case you were in a ditch somewhere.”

“Well, I'm not in a ditch... not technically anyway.”

“Are you going to tell me exactly where you are? GPS?”

“Probably not.”

“Then at least tell me you’re okay?”

“I'll be fine.”

“I take it you’re coming back for Christmas?”

She smirked. “Well, seeing as it’s Christmas Eve…”

“So you're going to be alone tomorrow.”

“No...” she lied, unconvincing even to her own ears.

“Right,” he responded, knowing that she would be. “Call me if you need me. Don't stew on anything. And don't throw yourself off the side of a mountain because you know I only write comedy and it probably won't go down well at your funeral.”

“I promise,” she smiled, a rush of affection for him washing over her.

“Love you.”

“Love you too.”

She hung up the phone and stared at the screen for a while. She thought about Finn, minding his own business in their apartment and suddenly hearing the thundering of fists at the door. While her friend was definitely not faint of heart, she still didn't like the idea of him being subjected to such loutish behaviour in his own home on her account and especially not at the hands of her -

Her what?

_ Not _ - _ boyfriend _ , she thought to herself.

Because Ben Solo was not, nor had ever been, her boyfriend.

He was just a guy, someone she had been keeping around for the occasional odd job like opening a stiff jar or fixing her TV or giving her the most mind-blowing oral sex she’d ever -

_ Not _ - _ boyfriend _ .

She scrolled up to his name in her phone book and stared at it for a while. Three stupid letters. B – E – N. She found looking at them conjured the shadow of his face to mind so she promptly switched over to Spotify, pressed play on the first song she liked and started the engine. It growled to life and her headlights came on, lighting up the drifting snowflakes in their yellow beams. It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon. The light was almost lost and she still had a little more of a ways to go, this time around narrow country roads, and the snow was beginning to fall thicker and faster this far north west.

She'd been to Wales only once before, when she was maybe ten years old. Her foster parents had taken her on a coastal holiday and it had rained all weekend. The only glimpse she'd had of the churning grey sea was through the window of a humid cafe as she burnt her lips on a mug of sachet hot chocolate. Now, she was bound for the rural mountainside of Snowdonia National Park where a small Air BnB cottage that she had spontaneously booked last night awaited her. 

She filled her tank up at the petrol station attached to the supermarket before setting off to complete the final leg of her journey. It took about twenty five minutes to reach her destination. Every stretch of road was an upward slope and she bit her lip nervously as she desperately tried not to stall the engine, even turning the music off in order to concentrate. Mercifully, after one or two wrong turns in the dark, she arrived in one piece, pulling onto a narrow gravel driveway before a white-washed pebble-dash cottage. She kept the car engine on in order to shine a light on the dark house front, leaving the door open as she trudged through the untouched snow, which was considerably deeper this high up, to get her small suitcase and shopping bags out of the boot.

After hoisting her luggage to the front door, she did a little dance on the spot to fight away the cold as she pulled her phone out of her pocket to check the screenshot of her booking confirmation email. Finding the code to the lock box, she jabbed at the keypad beside the door frame.

“2-1-8-7…” she breathed and a little clicking noise sounded before the lid sprang open, revealing a set of keys attached to a little golden robot on a chain. “Cute,” she remarked as she swiped them up and proceeded to twist one of the keys in the lock, pushing her way eagerly inside.

It wasn't warm exactly but at least it wasn't as freezing as it had been outside. Lugging her bags over the threshold, she quickly dashed back out to her car to kill the engine and lock up before finally closing herself into the dark and quiet interior of the old house.

Using the torch on her phone to search for a light switch and shaking off niggling thoughts of murderers hiding in shadowy corners (she loved true crime podcasts but they always went to her head) she yanked the dangling cord of a floor lamp and watched the room erupt into warm yellow light.

It was quaint, not too dated, not too modern.  _ Just right, said Goldilocks _ .

She was looking at a smallish living room decorated in dark wooden beams, off-white walls and leather cream-coloured upholstery. A small log burner was set into an alcove, thankfully stocked and ready to light. Thank god she wouldn't have to spend half an hour trying to google how to build a fire and then still mess it up, she thought. If she caused the place to go up in a terrible inferno, she'd have to wait outside in the cold again until assistance came.

“Okay,” she sighed, kicking off her snow boots. First things first: light the fire, carry her case to the bedroom and put her supplies in the fridge. It was a simple plan, but it was her own.

*

The rest of the cottage was decorated much the same as the living room which was open-plan with the kitchen to the right. The bedroom was surprisingly large and she was amused to find a piano in the hallway by the back door which led out to a little wilderness of a garden blanketed in glittering lavender-white snow. She turned on a few more lights and hooked up her phone to the surround sound system, which she discovered played music in every room at different volumes. 

After the fire was well and truly glowing and she finally felt safe to remove her woolen gloves and winter coat, she stood in front of it for at least ten minutes, allowing the heat to build and seep into her brittle bones. She liked watching the flames dancing behind the glass, seeing the wood char and burn a vivid orange, cracking and spitting merrily. After she had sufficiently warmed herself up, she packed her shopping away. Her hosts had left a box of eggs, a tub of butter and even a small bottle of cow's milk in the fridge which seemed like a waste as she didn't eat dairy. Perhaps there was a homeless shelter somewhere in the town she could take it to when she left, if it hadn't gone off by that stage. An idea struck her then, and she removed the milk, opened the front door and placed it in the snow to freeze so that it would keep for longer.

Once she had unpacked her clothes and toiletries, there seemed to be nothing more to do except enjoy her holiday. She looked around at the cushy interior; it was delightful, really, it was just… a little bereft of company.

Rey was certainly no stranger to loneliness; she had been alone since she had been taken into care at the age of five. She had been alone throughout her school years, when no one would talk to the girl whose clothes kind of smelled. She had been alone despite a series of foster parents who couldn't keep her full time and kept placing her back into the system. She was alone on her sixteenth birthday when she realised that it was too late for her true parents to ever come back for her. She had successfully made it into adult life on her own, moved to London on her own, got a job on her own, learned how to take care of herself physically and mentally. It was that kind of a city: full to the brim with people and culture and activity yet on its other face, it was a solitary place to exist.

Recently though, she hadn't felt the bite of it so much; she had been spoiled with the presence of a handful of salt-of-the-earth individuals. Finn, for one, straight-talking and flamboyant, always committed to delivering the truth whether it was to do with matters of politics or one's poor choice in fashion. He was the garish streak to her brooding nature, the fun side to her rainy days, the stern word when she was out of line. He made her a better person and she loved him for that. He was one of the only people in her life she could profess to truly love. Then there was Rose, an old work colleague of hers who was now much more of a friend, sickeningly cute and kind of annoyingly hyper-active but somehow, Rey couldn't help but love the girl. She was generous to a fault, warm and sweet as melted caramel and always there to talk to, especially when Rey needed to get out of her head.

And - until yesterday - there had been Ben.

Ben who had come into her life about a year ago. They had fucked the first time they met. They had been attending a meet-up at a bar hosted in honour of a collaborative art project they had both contributed to; Rey had been showcasing a series of poems she’d penned that were read aloud over some interpretive dance pieces while also being projected onto the walls of the gallery, and Ben, who worked at the gallery as a technician, had fitted some light installations. Over several pints, he had shown her pictures on his phone of various pieces he’d worked on, both his own work and that of others. She had spent more time admiring the cut of his jawline and the black stubble peppered across it than the photos on his screen.

After a brief but intense tryst at her place, she had kicked him – somewhat regretfully – out the next morning and not seen him again until the art show went live. On their first sight of each other after a couple of weeks, they had immediately endeavoured to find themselves in bed again as promptly as humanly possible. Ever since then, they had seen each other every week pretty much without fail –  _ not _ as boyfriend and girlfriend – because they were only human, afterall, and regular good sex was hard to come by. Actually, the sex was fucking incredible and that was even  _ rarer _ .

Snapping out of her revery, she shook her head and actually smacked her cheek lightly.

“Nope,” she sang loudly to herself to break the silence and moved towards the bedroom to retrieve her laptop. If she was going to have the whole weekend to herself in this isolated little pocket of wintry nowhere, the least she could do was spend it bloody productively. Writing always made her feel better, like a kind of therapy, like all of her experiences counted for something. 

Rey made little to no money writing the things that she actually wanted to, so she worked as a copywriter for a marketing agency to make rent. It was a pretty easy gig, all told, if quite depressingly devoid of the opportunity to flourish her creativity. It wasn't the best job in the world but she knew she could do a lot worse. Besides, because it wasn’t particularly mentally taxing she still had the energy to go home and write most evenings.

Making herself a nest in the corner of the cream sofa which squeaked under her weight, she threw a soft cotton blanket over her legs and pulled her laptop onto her knees. It was an old machine but it had served her well for the last few years. When she was younger and had made up stories purely for her own amusement, weaving tales about talking animals and castles shrouded in clouds and the adventures of vampire children. She had written in longhand on leaf after leaf of A4 note paper her social workers or foster carers would give to her, and still enjoyed taking her notebook out to the park whenever she felt lacking in inspiration. Typing was, of course, much faster when she was on a roll and needed to get her words out but there was a certain charm to the simplicity of a ballpoint pen and a paper. 

After an hour or so of being curled into the sofa cushions, typing out a sentence or two, deleting them again and sighing a lot, however, she realised that tonight her brain simply wasn’t in it.

Irritated with almost everything now, she huffed and snapped her laptop closed. She just couldn't concentrate, it was  _ impossible _ . It was as if there was a gnat buzzing round and around her head and its name was Ben Solo. She wished dearly that she could simply swat him away. Perhaps, she thought, catching sight of the box of wine bottles she had carried inside earlier, a pleasant tipple (or four) would do the trick.

She set her laptop on the coffee table and rose up to move towards the kitchen. She had decided on several bottles of Shiraz 'with notes of black cherry and a peppery aftertaste' because… she liked cherries and she liked pepper. Really, red wine was Ben's game and he was a bit of a snob about it, truth be told, though he'd never foisted a bad vintage on her yet. She pressed down a smokey memory of him striding across her flat with two glasses of ruby red liquid before handing one to her, taking a brief moment to ghost his fingers over her temple as he smoothed an errant lock of hair from her face. She had watched him with wide eyes as he sat down until he turned to her and said in an oblivious tone, “What?” She remembered being particularly rough in bed that night in order to counterbalance the softness that had passed between them.

Reaching into the cupboard for a glass, she rinsed it in the sink before tipping a small splash into the bowl in the same way Ben usually did, raising it to her nose to sniff.  _ Yep _ , she thought, pursing her lips in a small smile at how silly she suddenly felt.  _ Smells like wine.  _ Nevertheless, she sipped a little just like he would have and let its flavour roll on her tongue. She had chosen well, it was light and sweet. Filling the glass and raising it once again to her lips, she reached for her phone on the counter and scrolled until she found a playlist she liked before turning to peer out the window at the still falling snow. As she watched, the sound of trumpets followed by upbeat keyboards filled her ears. Lazily, she allowed her hips to sway gently as she took another sip. Loosening her taut shoulder muscles, she moved away from the window and made a jaunty little circuit around the living room, shuffling to the song as the singer crooned about his week from hell. Placing her glass on the coffee table beside her laptop, she let her arms swing free and her head roll on her neck, a smile creeping across her face as she danced, eyes drifting closed. God, it was nice to just let go.

After a minute or two, she opened her eyes, searching for her wine glass again. Picking it up and pressing it to her lips, she hazarded a glance out the window again at the snowy scene beyond and registered the car parked beside her own on the driveway.

Her heart stuttered to a painful stop in her chest as her brain attempted to process the meaning of the scene. Then there was a loud knock on the door.

Swallowing, clutching her glass so tightly she was surprised it didn’t crack, she eyed the front door and breathed in hard and sharp. She lowered herself to the floor and crept slowly towards the door, thinking she could slide the deadbolt into place before making for her phone. The music carried on playing as though nothing had changed. There was another knock, louder, more urgent and an all too familiar voice rang from the other side of the wood, “Rey, can you let me in? It's freezing!”

*

Like any storm worth its salt, Ben Solo - her  _ not-boyfriend _ \- disturbed the peace with all the subtlety of a grade five hurricane. All but crashing into the room – once Rey had decided that she couldn't leave him outside in the snow (because that would literally make her the pettiest person in the world) - he shook off the snow-laden shoulders of his coat and stomped his brown boots on the door mat. She slammed the door behind him then moved back several paces in order to keep her distance, so gob-smacked that she found herself unable to speak so much as a greeting or curse or question or even to tell him he better not get dirt on the expensive looking rug. When he had finished with his ministrations and hung up his coat - which Rey felt was offensively presumptuous - he turned his dark eyes on the room and scanned its interior. There was nothing to be given away in the expression he held.

“Nice place,” he said in a monotone.

Rey grasped at all the jumbled words dancing in her throat before finally settling on, “What the fuck?”

“Lovely to see you too. Thanks for the invite. Car sharing might have been a better call for the environment.”

She was already prepared to rip his face off.

“How – why – what -”

“Pick one, Rey,” he said, turning to her at last. “I don't mind which question it is, just pick one and stick to it.”

Her blood seemed to boil beneath her very skin, a seething venom. “How did you find me?”

He shrugged, and unless she was mistaken, looked a little sheepish, appearing to chew his tongue for a moment before saying, “Read your emails.”

Her eyes went wide with incandescent rage. Softly, as controlled as she could manage, she breathed, “Explain.”

“You left yourself logged to my tablet.”

Whenever people had used the word ‘flabbergasted’ before now, Rey hadn’t ever quite grasped its full meaning until this precise moment. She stood there before him, mouth hanging open in unadulterated fury.

“You -  _ you, _ ” she hissed, “are a fucking psychopath!”

“I was concerned,” he replied stubbornly.

“ _ And _ ? What kind of an excuse is that?”

“A valid one, if you’re asking me.”

“What was the point in following me all the way here, Ben? Can’t you take a hint?”

“No one had any idea where you were,” he said delicately, with the air of a person hanging onto the merest threads of his composure. 

“I'm not used to people keeping tabs on me, or  _ where _ I go, or  _ what _ I do,” she ground out.

“Then you might try remembering that there are people who fucking care about you,” he retorted, anger flaring for the first time through his mask of heavy sarcasm. “You can't just disappear, it's irresponsible.”

“Last time I checked, I'm my own person – I can do what I  _ want _ .”

“No one could get in contact with you,” he hissed, eyes narrowed accusingly at her.

“I didn’t. Want. To talk. To anyone.”

“Well, that was fucking stupid.”

“ _ Don't _ call me fucking stupid.”

“I'm  _ not _ , I'm just  _ saying _ it was a  _ fucking _ stupid thing to do.” His tone was infuriatingly condescending. She wanted to throw her glass of wine all over his smug face; she could, she thought idly, and considered it for a moment before deciding it would be a waste of good alcohol which she would almost certainly be needing tonight.

“Did you stalk me all the way from London just to call my intelligence into question? What the hell is your problem?”

“You can't just run away when we have a fight,” he told her, gesticulating pointedly.

“I wasn't running away!”

“Yeh? What were you doing then? What brings you out here to the middle of east Jesus fucking nowhere?”

She gritted her teeth and growled, “A  _ holiday _ .”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Well, I'm  _ so _ sorry to interrupt.”

Rey took a deep breath to calm herself. This was all getting a bit out of hand. As if Ben turning up hadn’t been ridiculously dramatic, this petty squabble of back and forth insult-trading was frustratingly petulant. If he was here, if they really were going to have this out now once and for all, she could at least play the rational adult of the situation – no matter how much her inner-child wanted to rave at him.

“I needed space,” she started steadily. “You pissed me off.”

“You were running away instead of trying to fix our shit like normal people.”

Rey balked at this ' _ our _ ' business, like they actually had anything to work out, like they had anything  _ real _ to recover. “So I’m being irrational for extricating myself from a conflict I didn’t want to be engaged in?” she asked imperiously.

“Rey, you drove over two hundred miles to put distance between us – that's kind of over the top, don't you think?”

“How many ways can I say this, Ben?  _ I didn't want to be found _ .”

He took a step closer to her then, bending down slightly so he was on her eye level, fixing her with an inescapable glare.

“Yes, you did,” he said. “You wanted to see how far I would come – for  _ you _ .” Rey shrieked like a wildcat in frustration as he went on. “Are you happy? Are you glad I came all this way in a fucking snowstorm and nearly got blown off the side of a mountain?”

“Pretty small mountain,” she spat, furiously indignant at his suggestion that she had  _ wanted _ to be followed by him.

“Snow. Storm,” he repeated slowly and deliberately. She turned away from him, covering her face with both hands. “Look at me,” he said.

“ _ Fuck _ off.”

“Rey.” His voice, while not warm, was suddenly much softer than before. “ _ Please _ .”

In another universe, one where she was stronger-willed and he, far less charming, she might have been able to say no to him when he asked her so nicely for things. There was a delicate purr of urgency, vulnerability in his tone and she was disarmed by it, had always been so powerless to refuse him when he uttered that word, ' _ please. _ '

She turned to face him, taking a moment to steel herself before looking up into his eyes.  _ Jesus _ , it was like looking at a black light, blinding and dark all at the same time. How did God dare to make a person so gorgeous? It simply wasn't fair on the rest of the world.

She held his gaze because the only thing worse than continuing to look at him would be losing her nerve to do so. As she watched, he let out a heavy sigh.

“I didn't come after you to fight more,” he said and the words seemed to cost him something.

“Then why did you?” She tried to keep her voice as steady as she could, though it was difficult.

“To - I don't know - fix things? To – to...” he appeared to steel himself for a moment. “To apologise.”

Rey was so taken aback that her mouth fell open. She stared at him, dumbfounded. “Say something, please,” he said quickly, shuffling his feet.

She took a large gulp of wine first. “Drink?”

He eyed the glass in her hand skeptically and shook his head. “Not right now.”

“More for me,” she shrugged, tilting her glass towards him before swivelling round to top herself up from the bottle on the counter. He didn't move to stop her –  _ how could he? _ – but she sensed that he would have liked to. She took another deep drink before turning back to him, arms folded across her chest. “So,” she began in a much calmer voice than she'd used before. “Go ahead.”

“‘Go ahead’, what?”

“With your apology.”

He frowned. “Don't be like that.”

Rey felt a twinge of shame at her pettiness but on the other hand, her pride prompted her to continue down the road she’d already started on. “You said you wanted to apologise. Be my guest.”

He fixed her with those dark eyes and she felt rather than saw something behind them that was burning hot and difficult to control. 

“I'm sorry we argued,” he said slowly. There was a pause.

“Okay,” she said simply, letting it hang in the air for a while.

“You could apologise too, you know,” he said shortly.

“For what?” she cried.

“For the things you said. For running off before we could even talk about it and -”

“Great fucking apology, Ben!” She laughed spitefully. “You know, I don't even know why we're doing this. Is it really necessary?”

“Necessary?” he repeated blankly.

“We're not – we’re not –”

She tried to say it, she really  _ did _ but her mouth kept getting stuck. He was watching her intently, calculatingly.  _ We're not even together, _ she thought desperately. Just say it out loud:  _ we're not even together. _

“We’re not what, Rey?” he asked with what she could have sworn was a splinter of sadness in his voice.

He stared her down until she felt a little shiver ripple up her spine. She could deal with him shouting, raving, dishing her sarcasm and taunts and accusations, but this? This yearning for clarity that she didn't have the balls to give him right now, to even speak out loud? It made her feel... ashamed. She broke his gaze and looked down at the floor. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his stature slacken a little and his head bowed slightly, as though mimicking her own posture. He  _ knew _ what it was that she couldn't say, she realised, and it made her feel weak and small and just kind of – depressed.

“I shouldn’t have called you a coward,” he said.

She blanched at the recollection of it, unable to even speak.

“It was wrong of me, it was - it was cruel and I’m sorry. You’re not a coward, not anything like a coward. You’re -” He worked his jaw and she could practically hear his teeth grinding. “You’re one of the ballsiest people I’ve ever met in my life.”

She stared at him, wide eyed and speechless. Her silence seemed to spur him on. 

“I like what I have with you – whatever you want to call it. I  _ like _ it.” Rey's brow furrowed with unvoiced questions. “But I feel it’s okay for them to grow into something different and you obviously find that a little more -  _ stressful... _ ” he trailed off. Rey noticed suddenly that her heartbeat was racing painfully.

“You don’t need to give me anything extra, Ben. It can just be what it is,” she mumbled, valiantly attempting to hold on to the façade of control she had over the situation.

“Can you do me the courtesy of being real with me, Rey? I’m kind of spilling my guts out here,” he said, holding his hands out imploringly.

She pursed her lips together in a thin line and sipped her wine.

“Fine,” she said. Shiraz, give her strength. “When we argued yesterday, when you -” She winced, remembering the row they’d had at his flat. “When you said you’d decided not to go to your mum and dad’s for Christmas this year and kind of - _hinting_ that we could spend it together…” She cleared her throat nervously. “I don’t know, Ben, it felt like a lot.”

“Plenty of people don’t go to their parents’ on Christmas Day,” he said defensively.

“I  _ know _ that but I thought - it felt like -” She shook her head, trying to clear it and begrudgingly set down her wine.

“ _ I _ thought that  _ you _ thought that I wanted -  _ that stuff. _ ” Her stomach curled at the suggestion. “I thought you were trying to spend Christmas with me and shit because you felt like you had to, because you knew Finn’s going to be with other people all day tomorrow. And then it really wound me up because I don’t need you to pity me, I don’t need you to leave them in the lurch on my account.”

He looked utterly dumbfounded. “No offense, Rey,  _ seriously _ , but you have  _ nothing _ to do with that.”

She flushed crimson, feeling translucent and undermined and unimportant all at once.

It was  _ horrendous _ .

She murmured, in a much softer voice than she would have liked, “Sometimes, Ben, you make me feel really small.”

There was a moment's pause between them.

“I don’t want that,” he said.

“Well… ” She shrugged her shoulders hopelessly, feeling more pathetic than ever.

“I’m really sorry,” he said very sincerely.

“Thank you,” she responded, and it seemed clipped even to her own ears. She took a deep breath before continuing. “The thing is, I'm not used to relying on other people. I can handle stuff myself.” Her words sounded stunted, awkward upon leaving her mouth but she carried forcibly on. “But you've been around, in my life, for a while now and I suppose you might – fine,  _ matter _ more than you once did.” She rounded off the admission lamely, not sure how much more honesty she could part with for the time being.

“Okay.” His voice was hushed and the corner of his lips were quirked up in a way she thought must be indicative of amusement. Her temper flared again.

“I'm not a joke, this isn't funny -” she started to scald him but he cut her off swiftly.

“No, no, no, it's not, I agree. You just say it like it's pulling teeth.”

She felt a muscle in her face twitch and she had to work hard to unclench her jaw.

“It feels very similar,” she muttered darkly. There was another pause before he opened his mouth again to speak.

“We've never had this conversation before.” It almost sounded like a question, like he was asking permission to broach the topic. She swallowed and shook her head. “We've never put a label on this or discussed what it might be and honestly, so far it’s all felt pretty organic - like there's been no pressure.”

Rey could feel her heart clench and shudder closed at the words: _ no pressure _ . She'd been that girl before: no strings, no commitments, the ‘ _ chill girl _ ’ as someone she’d once cared for had put it.

“Right,” was the only thing she could croak, a small, stupid noise. She cursed it and took another drink.

“But I like that,” Ben said and she had to suppress a full body shiver. What the fuck was wrong with her? “I don’t need to worry about what's going on between us, it’s easy, it doesn't hurt.”

“Really?” she whispered, unable to stop herself and whether it was down to the wine or the fact that she was at her wit's end, she didn't know. “Because it hurts me all the time.”

“Rey,” he started.

“No,” she said firmly and though her voice shook, she was glad for how determined it sounded. “Every time I see you, every time we're together, I’m torn between two people: the me who I’ve always been, stable and self-sufficient and independent. And then there’s me when I’m with  _ you _ or other people that I - that I care about, the me who lets people help out, who lets people in. I want to be – I don’t know who I should let myself be when I’m with you and it’s like these two sides of me are always fighting it out nowadays.”

She gulped, searching desperately for the right words before realising that there was simply no point in trying to control them. “The thing is, Ben, I want to have sex with you  _ all _ the time.” 

_ Well, _ she thought,  _ no taking  _ that _ back. _

To his credit, Ben didn’t react, merely continued to listen, his expression measured. She swallowed again before going on.  _ In for a penny… _

“I want to fuck you. I want you in me and around me all the time. Every minute of every day. I can't stop thinking about it. I’m not good at talking about how I feel, I never have been really. The life I’ve had… talking about the way you feel doesn’t get you anywhere.” She skimmed hurriedly over any further mention of her childhood. “I don't have the words, I don't know how to say the things I feel, how to tell you what I mean so, I think, maybe when we fuck, that’s a kind of language. Maybe that’s my way of telling you how I feel.”

She wasn't saying this, surely? She couldn’t really be saying these things. She actually felt a little light headed, as though her spirit was attempting to leave her body out of pure shame.  _ See you later, sister, we’re done with one another, you’re on your own. _

“So, yeah,” she finished pathetically, voiced coming to a clipped halt.

He stared at her and she felt herself looking into those deep, lovely eyes that she so rarely allowed herself to gaze into for too long for fear of falling in. She swallowed a lump in her throat and tried to remember how to breathe, heart hammering painfully, traitorously loud in her chest. “Sorry,” she added lamely.

“Rey,” he said with such gentleness in his tone she felt an errant tear spring to her eye, hot and wet and treasonous. “Do you remember when we were walking through Trafalgar Square that time?”

Perplexed, her mouth fell open a little.

“Um…”

“About four, five months ago, I think. We'd been to the pub with... I don't know,  _ someone _ , and we were walking along and we got to Trafalgar Square and there are the lions? You know, the big lion statues next to Nelson's column?” He paused, apparently waiting for her to confirm that she knew what on earth he was going on about. She blinked rapidly and nodded. “You ran ahead of me,” he hurried on, “Towards the lions, went straight up to them and you were looking up at them for  _ ages _ . I think you were kind of drunk – like, quite a bit, but in a happy way. And you got your phone out and you took this video. You walked all the way around this statue, took you a full minute to do because you were getting this thing from every angle.” He was smiling, brow slightly furrowed in what was evidently incredulity. She bowed her head, shook it, looked back up at him with a steady, challenging gaze.

“So what, Ben?”

He met her eyes and something in his own softened like warm butter.

“I think that about that video you took of the lion statue all the time,” he said very quietly. “I don't know why. It's just  _ you _ , Rey. When you bite my cheek at the supermarket or jump in a puddle like a kid or something. I saw you dancing in the window just now, before I knocked, and you looked so –  _ light _ . You make me feel light. There's so much I see in you that makes us the same but you turned out brighter somehow, despite how difficult things have been for you growing up and stuff you've been through and I just think sometimes, this hopefulness in you, am I leeching off it? But it's hard to resist - you’re hard to resist.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

“That... I've gotten used to your light. I’ve come to need it, I think. Rey, I...” He took a deep breath and suddenly she knew instinctively what he was about to say. “I’m in -”

“No!”

He jumped at her outburst looking perplexed. “What?”

“Don't! You don't have to - you don’t have to say that, you don’t – oh, fuck.”

“Rey, I've got to – I  _ want _ to -”

“Nope. No. No, no.” She was shaking her head frantically, clutching at her chest where her heart was racing. He stared at her, frowning in concern.

“Are you okay?”

She was breathing heavily, pulse fluttering wildly.

“I think I'm having a panic attack,” she wheezed.

“What?” His voice was utterly deadpan.

“I need to sit down.”

He looked around and clearly seeing nothing to pull up for her, chose instead to lead her by the hand to the sofa. Vaguely, she noted how cold his fingers were. She held on to them as she sat down.

Sinking into the sofa cushions, she drew in a deep, shuddering breath that didn’t quite seem to reach her lungs. She tried to suck in another but the same thing happened, her lungs pushing the air right back out, causing her heartbeat to sputter alarmingly. On her next in-breath, she made an involuntary noise of strangled panic. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t let herself need him, he couldn’t tell her he needed her, it would ruin her, it would break her like never before if she gave in to it -

“Look at me,” Ben was saying and she felt a cool hand on her cheek. Her eyes darted to his, wide and stinging with tears. “It’s okay, you’re okay, we’re going to be alright,” he said in a low, soothing voice and she grounded her frantic mind to the sound of it. “You’re going to follow my breath, okay? We’re going to breathe together. Yeh, can you do that? Rey?”

She nodded, still huffing, chest constricted. She was absentmindedly aware of how ridiculous this all was and it made her even more agitated. Ben was looking intently into her eyes, never looking away, still holding a palm to her face while the other gently but firmly gripped her kneecap.

“Okay, so breathe in now…” His nostrils flared as he drew in an exaggerated breath. She tried to follow him but her lungs pushed the oxygen back out again and she sobbed. “And out,” he continued, peering into her face and she made a valiant effort to blow out as he did with his mouth. On they went, in and out, in and out, again and again for several minutes. Steadily, the staggered journey of oxygen travelling up and down her throat began to even and her heart rate began to slow as her breathing pattern matched Ben’s - for the most part.

“That’s it,” he kept saying. “That’s good. In and out. Right with me, we’re okay.”

At long last, she sighed out, still a little shaky, and leaned forwards so that her head curled down towards her knees. She felt so mortified that she didn’t know what to say, wanted to explain her excessive reaction away. “I’m sorry…” she breathed, voice catching.

“Don’t be,” he replied softly, one palm still resting reassuringly on her leg. “It’s okay.” 

After several more minutes, she straightened her spine and drew in a long, deep breath that reached all the way to the bottom of her lungs, making her shiver a little as she blew it out again.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, feeling exhausted and wretched.

“No, I am. You weren’t - it wasn’t -” Ben pinched his eyes closed for a moment. “I don’t want to rush you into anything, Rey, and I know that this is obviously hard for you and I don’t want to pressure you with this stuff. I don’t want you to feel unsafe,  _ ever _ . But I want you to know that…” he paused, searching for the words. “That I  _ do  _ care about you,” he finished, eyeing her warily. A little flutter tugged at her heart like a needle pulling thread through rough canvas. “There’s no other way to say it. I care for you a lot and we can take our time, as much as you need,  _ if _ it’s something that you want too. I don’t want to be an abstract concept in your life; I want to be something of yours and for you to be something of mine. I want you to be ready but I’ll wait for that, I’m happy to wait for that if time is something you need. And I won’t let you down, I’ll remind you every day, I won’t ever hurt you -”

“You don’t know that. No one knows what will happen,” she insisted, sniffing pathetically.

“ _ I _ do,” he said fiercely. “I will never intentionally do anything to hurt you or break your trust. Christ, maybe you’ll hurt me? But in so many ways, I’m okay with taking that risk because you’re worth it. Rey, if you’re not prepared to take that risk then I understand, I can live with it, you know? I just really don’t want to.”

Rey’s mind was strangely simultaneously blank and _reeling_. She was trying to hold on to the sense of calm she had just regained in light of her anxiety attack and her grip on it was already slipping. _Ben_ _didn’t want to live without her_. He could, he’d said, but he was choosing not to.

_ He wanted her. _ Wanted to  _ be  _ something of  _ hers. _ And if she was honest with herself, no holes barred, all pretense and defensive walls in her mind and heart torn down, could she honestly say that she’d didn’t want him in exactly the same way? He had almost -  _ almost  _ \- said  _ that _ word several minutes ago and it still didn’t bear thinking about, but perhaps in the future it could be acceptable? Maybe even  _ welcome _ ?

She drew in a breath and tilted her head, looking at him watching her intently. His gaze, while a little unsure perhaps, was warm like melted chocolate, sweet and rich and  _ beautiful _ . And god, he really  _ was _ beautiful; she’d always known just how attractive he was, how she was punching drastically above her weight when it came to him, but until now she hadn’t allowed herself to really feel the gravity of how truly  _ perfect _ she found his face, his dark eyes, his long beak-like nose, the way his ears peered out of his thick ebony hair, his unbelievably toned body, his voice like Christmas morning -  _ holy fucking shit _ , it was like having a religious experience, this angelic human fixing her with such an affectionate, intense gaze.

_ To hell with thinking, _ she thought, sick of her barely coherent musings. Catching another breath, she felt suddenly desperate to regain some ground that she knew, to bring them both into familiar territory that they had traversed a hundred times or more. She raised her palm to his cheekbone and he swiftly reached up to cover her hand with his own, stroking her knuckles delicately, making the skin tickle and fizz with anticipation for what was about to come.

For the eeriest handful of moments, neither of them moved, staring at one another and breathing heavily, then all at once, their lips came together. It was almost chaste how Ben’s lips slid across her own, soft and plush and warm, so  _ warm, _ and Rey had the strangest feeling of coming home. She parted her mouth and enveloped his lower lip in a soft kiss, tasting him, feeling the light, barely-there scratch of stubble on his chin against hers. His palm crept up to her neck and cradled the base of her skull, holding her tenderly in place. Her heart skipped a beat.

_ Too soft. _

She flung herself forwards against his chest, half off the edge of the sofa, holding herself upright with her arms wrapped around his neck and shoulders and he responded enthusiastically, bundling her up in his own much stronger, larger arms which circled tightly around her waist.  _ Yes _ , she thought,  _ this is it. This is right. _

Getting haphazardly to their feet, still clinging to one another, Rey’s toes left the floor for a moment as he held on to her body at his full height, never breaking the contact between their mouths. After several seconds of this, embracing and kissing fiercely, relentlessly, breathlessly, Ben pulled his face away, causing Rey to moan needily at the loss of his lips. He smirked -  _ the fucker  _ \- and grunted hoarsely, “Bedroom?”

“First on the left,” she supplied, already leaning in to kiss him once more. He acquiesced for a time, slanting his wide, beautiful mouth over her much smaller one, trailing sporadic little reverences across her jawline before slipping a hand beneath her backside.

“Jump up,” he commanded roughly, mouth still attached to her skin. She pushed into the floor with the balls of her feet and sprung, wrapping her thighs around his waist as he hoisted her into place against his torso, holding her quite comfortably with a hand clutching the underside of each of her legs. He planted languorous, hot kisses on her cheekbones and temples as he began to walk, painfully slowly, towards the corridor. Rey could feel his erection, yearning against his dark jeans, pressing into  _ just the right place _ \- she pulsed her hips lightly against it, eliciting a spark of liquid heat to bubble in her abdomen and her nails dug into the skin of his shoulders. He hissed sharply, teeth bared. “Brat,” he groaned affectionately and  _ fuck _ , she loved it when he spoke to her like that.

Once they had crossed the threshold to the bedroom, not bothering to shut the door behind them, Ben lowered her gently onto the mattress so that she was splayed on her back, legs akimbo either side of his body as he languished long, wet ministrations against her neck and collar bone.

_ Too soft _ , whispered that urgent voice in her head again and she reached up to curl her fingers into his long, dark hair, holding him in place against her skin with one hand and  _ tugging _ at his curls with the other. He  _ growled _ at this, teeth very lightly nipping the skin of her clavicle that he had just been kissing, and he looked up at her with glistening eyes the colour of pitch. He looked fierce and hungry, like a wolf.

“You want to fight me, girl?” he asked and she couldn’t have looked away if she’d wanted to, so hot and heavy was his gaze; the look he gave her was the gravity tethering her to the centre of the earth. “Hm? You don’t want to play nice?”

The keening hum that escaped her lips came from a place deep, deep in her gut, a visceral whine of  _ want, want, want. _

“I’ve always had my work cut out with you, haven’t I?” he asked and sunk his teeth into the flesh of her left breast through her cotton t-shirt, not sharp enough to break the skin but possessive in the way his jaw clamped down over such delicate flesh. Another strangled cry fell from her mouth. “Every time I think you’ve learned how to behave, you prove me wrong. What the fuck am I gonna do with you?”

It was, of course, a rhetorical question because they both knew damn well what he was about to do. He rose up higher on the bed to hover over her, eye to eye, searching her gaze intently. She could barely breathe again but this time, waiting for him to make his move here on this bed in the middle of nowhere with no danger of interruption or being heard - no  _ limitations  _ \- it was a very, very good kind of breathlessness.

He trailed his fingers slowly, teasingly up the inside of one of her clothed legs until it reached her aching core and then he cupped her sex in his huge palm. She had sat in that hand many a time while he watched, pleased, as she squirmed in ecstasy around his crooking fingers, rubbed herself against the heel of his palm to massage her clitoris. Her mind went white for a moment as he squeezed her crotch, applying just enough lovely pressure to call forth a ripple of pleasure, a little shockwave of  _ fuck yes _ \- 

“Rey?” he was asking as her eyelids fluttered open. “If you want me to treat you nicely, you’re going to do exactly as I say. Understand?” She nodded her head emphatically, voice lost somewhere between the sofa cushions in the other room. He leaned in closer so that their noses were almost touching; she could feel his hot breath, peppermint scented, breezing over her flushed cheeks. “Tell me.” She gulped. He narrowed his eyes and relinquished the pressure of his hand around her infuriatingly clothed vulva -

“I do, I do, I understand. I’ll do whatever you say, please, just please -” she babbled, lost to her own desperate lust. The corner of his mouth lilted up in a small smirk -  _ still a fucker  _ \- and he replied evenly, “Please, what? What do you need, Rey?”

She swallowed again, breath shallow in her rapidly rising and falling chest.

“Please,” she began, barely a whisper. “Tell me how to be good for you.”

His smirk widened into a dark smile. “That’s my girl.”

In a swift movement, he was standing between her legs looking down at her draped on the bed like a wet rag. She yelped at the lack of his body and made to sit up but he fixed her with a warning look. “Stay down.” Molten lust coiled in her belly at his commanding words and she lowered herself back onto the bed, always watching him, anticipating his next move, thoughts sprinting a mile a minute. He tilted his head to the side with a sort of imperious interest, studying her lying there before him, rumpled, flustered, flushed. Then his smile broke into a fully fledged grin and he said, “Take off your shirt.”

She did, responding to his bidding with lightning quick movements, continuing to lie on her back while ripping the baggy cotton top over her head and flinging it behind her, landing - somewhere.

“Now your jeans. Slower this time.” She swallowed another lump in her throat and, trying not to let her hands shake, reached down to the button of her trousers and unfastened it. The zipper slid down beneath her fingers and it was as if she could hear each rung popping open in the quiet, heavy air. Her hands jerked to her waistband next, hooking beneath it and  _ pushing _ -

“What did I say?” he asked steadily. She blinked several times in quick succession.

“Slow,” she murmured. He nodded meaningfully at her and she moved with as much cajoled discipline as she could muster, inching the fabric down over her hips, her thighs, her knees. When she got to her shins, he leaned forward and pressed the tips of two fingers gently between her breasts and coaxed her arching spine back against the mattress, kneeling and taking hold of her feet. So softly, he removed first her left then her right sock, bright red and fluffy, an early christmas present from Rose. She flexed her toes and they gave a sharp little click. Ben brought one of her feet up to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the bare instep there, tongue escaping his mouth to lick slowly against the inside of her sole where the skin was soft and spongy. Lord fucking help her but she wasn’t even into foot stuff - what this man was capable of doing to her was  _ ludricous _ .

He tugged on the legs of her jeans, thankfully not her most skin tight pair, delicately extracting her heels from the cuffs and sliding them all the way off so that now she was looking up at him, naked but for her lacey purple underwear. He mused over the offending item of clothing for a few seconds before saying, “A little racey for a weekend alone, don’t you think?” She wasn’t sure how to answer but that was okay, because he continued. “I wonder if you were planning anything special, hm?”

_ Now _ she knew how to answer, with an abrupt shake of her head. “No, I wasn’t planning anything, I just wanted to feel -”

“Sexy?” he smirked and if this teasing smarted a little, it made up by causing a gush of wetness to seep between her folds. She  _ liked _ him calling her out,  _ liked _ how it made her feel seen and small enough to fit in the palm of his rough hands. “Could it be that wearing lingerie reminds you of how it feels when I peel it off?” Another gush of arousal coiled between her legs and she squirmed, needing so badly for relief, for  _ pressure _ -

“I told you to stay still,” he reminded her softly but firmly. She  _ squeaked _ in despair but lay back, trying to catch her breath which was, quite frankly, all over the shop.

With her gaze trained on the ceiling in order to stop herself from rising up again and tackling him, she felt his weight shift against her lower half, splaying warm, massive hands over her pelvic bones and pressing his face against her clothed sex. Her hips bucked violently, bumping against his mouth and nose but he had clearly braced for this as he barely moved his head. “Easy, girl,” he breathed across her thighs and she whimpered at the delightful torture when he began kissing her through her panties, that hateful lace preventing her from feeling the true, wonderful wetness of his mouth and tongue. She couldn’t keep from gyrating her hips with each little lap he bestowed on her and soon she had to fling her forearms over her eyes to block out the light, desperately attempting to corral her senses which were swiftly going into overdrive. 

She felt him dip a finger beneath her gusset and yank her underwear to the side; her hottest, softest, most trembling spot was now exposed to the open air, coolness settling over the wetness there, and instead of dampening her arousal, the sensation only served to aggravate it more. The tip of a rough finger slid up her slit from centre to clit and she panted uncontrollably.

“Fucking hell, girl,” Ben breathed in what sounded like an awestruck tone. She peeked out from under the crooks of her elbows to look down at where he was settled between her legs, examining a glistening index finger a few inches from his face. His lips were slightly parted, eyes narrowed in lustful amazement. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this wet before.”

She wriggled her hips selfconsciously and he smiled. “Don’t hide from me,” he said, reaching up the hand he had caressed her with and taking hold of one of her arms. She allowed him to pull it down to her side, lacing his long fingers with her own slender ones beside her hips. Still smiling, he tugged her underwear to the side further with a crooked finger and sank down to lick her cunt with all the thirst of a man who hadn’t had a drink in weeks.

“Oh my  _ fucking  _ god…” she moaned. “Oh my  _ fucking god  _ -”

He hummed happily against her. “You like this?”

She couldn’t string another sentence together so merely repeated her previous sentiments and he buckled down in earnest now, sucking lightly on her labia minora and then her clitoris which positively sang under his mouth. Jesus,  _ jesus,  _ she was going to -

“Ben, Ben, Ben -” she choked, panicked. He let go of her hand and her fingers curled around the covers in a vice grip as he slid one long digit inside her, the delicious, velvet contact, causing stars to pop behind her closed eyelids. She was so, so close, she could fucking taste it,  _ fuck _ -

“Look at me, girl,” Ben growled against her pussy, chest rumbling between her tensing thighs. “I want to see you open up for me.”

With a sharp and very audible exhale, she snapped her head up to look him in the eyes while his mouth worked on her, coaxing higher and higher, nose buried in the dark curling hair at her apex, gaze glistening with smouldering arousal and then he  _ slipped in another finger and crooked them  _ -

When her orgasm came crashing over her like a tsunami, the sound she made felt like it had been pulled out of her by a fishing line from the deepest depths of her lungs, dragging up through her chest and cresting on her lips, soaring into the open air. It was almost painful, how lingering and slow and burningly intense it was, long pulses of pleasure reverberating around her walls, thighs quaking around his shoulders and Ben continued to guide her clenching, needy cunt through the shattering, boiling, beautiful sensation erupting between her legs. She was vaguely aware somewhere in the back of her mind that she had to have been cumming for over a minute now - it was never-ending, this heavenly, blissful, breathtaking, world-destroying, devastating feeling -

She was panting as she floated down, the orgasm not having left her body entirely but eeking itself out of her system like something on wheels, idly down a long, long hill. Her chest heaved, her head span, her arms and legs felt boneless, unfit for anything but allowing Ben unobstructed access to her centre. Her head wobbled on her neck as she peered up to look at him, still with his fingers moving very gently inside her, barely jostling her at all. He was watching her still with that same fiery hunger and his face -

_ Fucking hell _ , she thought as she took in the state of his mouth and chin, shining wetly.

He let out a low grunt of amusement and satisfaction and maybe pride. “You squirted.”

She couldn’t say anything but, “Fuck.”

“I’ll say,” he smirked and this time, she smirked right back at him as he rose on slightly shaking legs and wiped his face on his sleeve. It was crude and salacious and so  _ fucking hot _ .

“Shift up,” he told her before ripping off his top with one hand. She tried to make her limbs work but they were hopelessly jelly-like. He was unbuttoning his fly when he threw a glance towards her and saw her still heaving chest and the way she was pathetically trying to shuffle backwards on the bed to make room for him. “Here,” he grumbled performatively, and Rey now knew for sure that he was  _ definitely _ pleased with himself. “Hold on to me.”

He kneeled on all fours over her, trousers hanging open, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on for dear life as he crawled across the mattress with her clinging to him like some kind of over-sexed koala.  _ What a strange visual, _ she thought absentmindedly and blinked hard a few times, wondering if the intensity of the orgasm he’d just given her had sent her a little funny. 

Ben sighed above her. “Looks like you’re all tuckered out, girl.” He laid his body against hers and she felt utterly enveloped by him, his weight, his heat, his scent. “I can’t help spoiling you, you’re just so fucking pretty.” It was ridiculous how hard she blushed, hot blood pounding in her cheeks. “You okay if I fuck you?”

She nearly choked on her own breath but managed to hide it by moaning her affirmation, nodding emphatically.

“Good girl. You don’t have to do anything, okay? I’ve got you.” He pressed a lazy kiss to her mouth and she moaned again happily, surrounded by everything that was so quintessentially  _ him _ . He slid off her and made short work of discarding his lower garments, rolling her onto her side and shuffling up behind her so his navel was flush against her backside. “Lift your leg for me,” he murmured sweetly, nipping the curve of her ear and she obliged without a moment’s hesitation, sliding her leg backwards and over his hip. He dipped his fingers into her slit again, languorously testing the waters of her body and she sighed, letting her head fall back onto his shoulder.

“Ben,” she rasped, barely able to speak. “Please.”

“You want my cock in you?”

“Yes, yes, please - please give it to me, it’s all I want, it’s all I -”

His dick was like a wrecking ball to her system, sliding into her and shattering everything she thought she knew as it hit home, all the way in, right to his hilt.

“ _ Holy motherfucking -” _ she hissed, nearly gagging at how good it felt to be filled with him. 

She felt his warm breath against the nape of her neck as he chortled. “Dirty girl,” he grunted, beginning to move steadily inside her. “The mouth on you. Should wash it out with soap.” He paused. “Or maybe my dick would do the trick?”

She felt herself instinctively clamp down on his hardness and he hissed, “Fuck, Rey.”

_ There, _ she thought smugly, grinning lackadaisically.  _ That serves you right. _

He pounded into her, gripping the thigh hanging over his body with possessive fingers, movements increasing rapidly to the point of relentless abandon. She choked and moaned and grunted, feeling the gorgeous melody of another building orgasm as he plucked each silken string inside her just right.  _ No one, _ she thought absently,  _ No one has ever made me feel the way you do. _

“Good girl, this is so  _ good,  _ girl,” he ground out, lavishing the column of her throat with sloppy kisses. “You’re pussy is perfect, it’s so perfect for me.” She clenched around him again and he bit down on her neck, not  _ quite _ painful but enough to elicit a high pitched snarl from her throat. “That’s it, my little fucking wildcat. You’re so fucking sexy, Rey.”

With the arm she wasn’t using to prop herself up, she scrabbled behind her head for Ben’s shoulder, grabbing and clutching at it fiercely, teeth gritted, hissing raggedly. Her belly was alight with sweet tension, bubbling somewhere just out of reach. As if he had read her thoughts, Ben slipped his arm across her waist so that his brawny forearm held her hitched leg in place and his fingers could easily swipe at her swollen clit, drawing erratic circles on her.

“Oh, fuck no - oh  _ god - _ ” she bit back a groan as the growing feeling inside her soared up to a trembling crescendo.

“That’s it, girl, come for me,” Ben whispered right into her ear and with a sense of falling head first over a golden cliff edge, she tumbled into her second orgasm, glowing and shaking and yelling out a long, jagged cry of ecstasy, of bittersweet, fleeting, pure joy. She gasped and felt a tear streak down her face, leaving a cool saltwater trail on her inflamed skin and then Ben buried himself right to the hilt inside her and stilled, his rock hard stomach quivering and quaking against her back as he came too.

*

Like a venus fly trap, Rey’s eyes creaked open. At first, she felt discombobulated, staring at the unfamiliar turquoise shag rug beside the bed, the white washed walls, the varnished oak door hanging open. She blinked several times and rolled her shoulders, sighing sleepily. She attempted to recapture her memories of the night before, eyes still darting about the room. The duvet was tucked right up under her chin, clutched in her balled fist. She huffed and tilted her head to squint at the space on the mattress beside her. The linen sheets and downy covers were rumpled on the other side of the bed but no one else was there.

Her brain flashed an image of a large, bare chested man lying in exactly the spot she was looking at, and  _ he _ was familiar if nothing else was.

_ Ben. _

She sat up poker straight, head spinning slightly with the rush of blood. Had she dreamed it?

It was then that she heard music coming from down the hall, piano and synth accompanied by crooning rap vocals. Frowning, she threw the covers off and was pleased to find that the air beyond was pleasantly mild, despite the snow still falling beyond the window pane. He must have turned the central heating on when he got up, as she couldn’t remember having done so last night.

Glancing down at her nude body, she shrugged and spotted the shirt Ben had discarded the night before, pulling it over her head for, you know, common decency’s sake. Then she tripped bare foot out of the room and down the corridor, the pulsing beat of the song growing louder with each step she took.

In the kitchen, she found Ben, dressed in nothing but light grey jogging bottoms, dancing in front of the stove with a spatula in hand and  _ popping his hips _ , eyes partially closed as he moved to the music.

_ “I say call me Rocky, she said she won’t call me that… they say you ain’t wifey type but I don’t care, I want you -”  _ he sang, completely unaware of her presence or her raised eyebrows, mouth hidden behind her hand as she gave an uncontainable giggle of mirth. He spun around, still in the middle of the chorus and spotted her, freezing in place before giving her a comical double thumbs up.

“How did I not know you were into trap music?” she asked, still barely controlling her snigger.

He rolled his eyes, reaching for the volume controls. “I’m not into trap,” he insisted, though his shoulders continued to jerk along to the beat.

“Oh, so you’re just  _ pretending _ to enjoy the  _ trap music _ for the benefit of all the other people in this room?” she teased, deliberately turning her head from side to side.

He pointed the wooden spatula at her, flinging a speck of oil onto the counter as he did so. “I don’t know what  _ you  _ think trap is, but it isn’t this.”

“Then what  _ is  _ this?”

“Spotify says it emo rap.”

“‘Emo rap’, yeh?” She snorted when he narrowed his eyes further at her. “Like Linkin Park?”

“Hey, Linkin Park are nu metal,” he said in mock-serious tones though the corner of his mouth quirked at her.

“Whatever happened to old school rap?”

“That’s your flavour, is it?” he teased and grinned mischievously.

“I could show you good rap, kid.”

“What do you know about it?”

“Nas,” she said without hesitation.

“I know Nas,” he huffed in amusement.

“Oh yeh? Just the first three tracks on  _ Illmatic _ , right?”

“Yes!” he agreed, grinning broadly back at her now. They stared at each other, beaming stupidly for a few moments as the current song ended and a new one began to play, low bass notes sounding in the quiet air as the artist crooned, ' _So this is what it looks like right before you fall..._ '

Rey had to suppress her smile from growing any bigger because she would very possibly look maniacal if she didn’t. “What are you making?” she asked for something to focus on.

Ben, still grinning, blinked and scratched his scalp, a few raven black locks falling into his eyes.

“Christmas breakfast,” he responded.

“Oh, fuck!” she muttered then laughed at how crazy it was that she’d forgotten. She approached the counter top, never breaking his eye contact and said cheerfully, “Happy Christmas, Ben.”

He lifted a palm to her cheek and her eyes fluttered closed carelessly, basking in the easy touch. When she opened them, he was looking down at her with ferocious tenderness. 

“Happy Christmas, Rey.”

She couldn’t help it.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, yanking on the thick, silky hair at the nape of his neck and pulling him down for a lingering kiss. When they broke away, his eyes were still closed.

“But seriously,” she croaked, a little breathless. “What are you making?”

He snickered a little and lilted his chin towards the numerous metal pots simmering away on the stove. “Veggie sausage, tomatoes, beans…” he jerked his head back towards the other side of the kitchen. “And toast. There wasn’t much on offer.”

She socked him playfully in the stomach. “What about my avocado?”

He wrinkled his nose and she responded by springing up to catch its tip between her teeth lightly. He hummed and gritted his own teeth together.

“I fucking hate that green shit and you know it,” he said.

“But it’s an excellent source of nourishment,” she countered.

He rolled his eyes. “Which is why I’ve diced some up for you.”

She chuckled happily. “Seasoned with -”

“Oil, salt and pepper.”

“No basil?”

He shot her a raised eyebrow. “I’m working with what I’ve got here.”

“Good job,” she beamed and planted another kiss on him. He smacked her rump.

“Go sit down,” he said.

Rey bit her lip. “What if I want to stand?”

He studied her for a moment, assessing her disposition. His grip on her left buttock tightened and she sucked in a gasp. “I said sit down.”

She bit her lip and nodded, feeling a familiar little fire spark in her groin. She moved over to the breakfast bar, perching on one of the stools there, fidgeting to get comfortable. When she looked back at him, he was watching her, quite still.

“Are you wearing underwear?”

Her cheeks pinked and she batted her eyelashes at her fingers resting on the countertop.

“Nope.”

Ben’s eyelids gently closed and he sighed heavily before shaking his head and turning back to the oven.

Ten minutes later, he was sliding a plate of food in front of her while in the process of taking his own seat and Rey was in the process of realising that she was fucking  _ famished. _ She speared a Linda McCartney with her fork, not bothering to cut it, and greedily took a large bite out of it, devouring half the sausage in a single go.

“Hungry?” Ben asked conversationally, without a hint of judgement in his tone.

“Mmmm,” she mused by way of response. “Didn’t have any tea, did we?”

Ben was neatly cutting into his beans on toast, ever the more refined dinner guest. It was very endearing to Rey, who had learned to eat quickly with a knife and fork, lest anyone try to swipe morsels from under her nose. How innocent he sometimes was in her eyes; she hoped he never had to understand what it was like to feel truly hungry.

“What are your friends doing for Christmas?” he asked. Rey shrugged.

“Rose is at home with her parents. They always do a Christmas vigil for her sister so she doesn’t stay in London. Finn is at his grandma’s, as you know, but I think he’s bringing his new fella, Poe back to the flat tonight.”

Ben chuffed slightly. “That’ll be the guy I saw standing behind him at the front door.”

Rey swallowed a mouthful of smashed avocado - which tasted fucking heavenly, thank you very much - and cleared her throat, thinking about Ben turning up at her front door and giving one of her closest friends the third degree.

“You didn’t have to interrogate my flat mate like that,” she said quietly. There was a short pause.

“I wanted to find you,” he responded quite matter-of-factly. “He didn’t mind once I told him you’d gone all Rambo.”

“Hey?” she chortled, perplexed in spite of the conversation.

“Taken off to hide out in the wilderness,” he explained.

“Have you ever seen Rambo?”

“No,” he shrugged and she laughed, lifting another bite of food into her mouth. Once she’d swallowed, she gathered her resolve once again. She had to lay down some boundaries if they were going to - if this was - 

She sighed, irritated at herself.

“He sounded a bit miffed about it when he spoke to me yesterday,” she said.

Ben scratched his face, clearing his own throat now. “He seemed just as concerned about you as I was.”

She cast him a sidewards glance. “I don’t know, Ben. You can’t go hammering people’s doors down on my account. _ ” _

“I’d do it again.”

She chewed her next mouthful slowly. “There has to be a line. I don’t want you bothering people just to check up on me.”

He had gone quite mute beside her, as if he was trying to decide what to say that would be least likely to cause a conflict. “I wouldn’t ever do it for trivial things. Yesterday was different. Finn told me your room was all torn apart when he went to check and your phone and laptop were gone and he couldn’t get hold of you. He was worried, just like me. It was a joint decision.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

Ben cleared his throat. “He told me I should try to find you.”

Mortified, Rey shook her head. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

Ben nodded slowly. “People care about you,” he stated before forking a piece of fried tomato into his mouth.

Rey mulled this over. She knew  _ in theory  _ that people cared about her. She did. It still didn’t make it any less of an alien concept to her. The logic of the thought was there, but it didn’t quite reach home.

For a few seconds, she chewed her tongue, wondering if she had the willpower to see this through, to speak the words that were trying to break through her steel clad emotional barriers. She spewed them out in a rush.

“It’s difficult for me to understand that sometimes.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Ben stilled, cutlery hovering midway between his plate and mouth. She heard him inhale as he turned to face her more directly.

“Why?” he asked softly.

_ Oh boy, you’ve done it now. _

She cleared her throat, swallowed, cleared her throat again.  _ Why, oh, why did you open this door? _

She scooped a forkful of beans into her mouth, chomping voraciously, because it seemed to make everything a lot less  _ weighted _ . Then, she said, “You know I don’t have any family to speak of, right?”

He nodded. “You were in foster care for a while.”

“Right,” said quickly, inwardly wincing at how little she had told him before, how ferociously she had defended this part of her life from him every time he’d asked, how much she would have to fill him in on now. She ploughed on before she could lose her nerve.

“Like, when I say that, I don’t mean that I’m estranged from them or haven’t ever met them or have like, a long lost grandfather waiting out in the Bahamas to introduce himself to me. I don’t remember much about my parents. They, ugh, ditched me when I was little.” She cleared her throat, scratched the back of her head. “Just left me to kind of -  _ hang out. _ ”

“How little?” Ben asked, eyes penetrating her. She decided it was best not to meet his gaze.

“Eh,” she mused, faux-casual. “Like four or five. I was at school and they just - never picked me up.” She whistled through her teeth in chagrin. “They were gone, completely gone. School tried to find them, social services, rah rah rah, but the flat where we lived was on a lease and they’d straight up side-stepped right out of that contract so -” She made jazz-hands before stabbing half a slice of toast and cramming it into her mouth. Still, she didn’t look at Ben.

“So I grew up in the foster system, you know. I don’t know, actually, maybe you don’t. I was just passed around a lot. Nice people, mostly. Others were more there for the benefit fraud. But you know, I had a bed and hot water and shit for the most part so, you know, it was okay.”

“For the most part?” he asked, voice very quiet.

_ Don’t panic, keep going. _

“I stepped out of a bad situation when I was thirteen. Bloke made me feel really uncomfortable, missus was a catholic nut who couldn’t see she was married to a fucking paedo so, I peeled off - because fuck that.” Ben was silent, so she carried on. “But you know, that was the worst. Mostly it was okay.”

For a few uncomfortable moments in which Rey would never admit that her heart was in her throat, Ben was silent. Then, he murmured, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

She pulled in a long breath and forced all of her courage to rise into her neck muscles, turning to look at him. “Like I said: it’s difficult for me to understand that people care.”

She scratched her arm, ran her tongue around her mouth, pushed her plate away. She felt edgy, unsettled, a tick pulsing in her foot.

Ben’s hand landed on her’s.

“Thank you for talking to me about it,” he said softly.

Instinctively, she wrenched her hand away from his, holding it to her chest and cradling it with her other as if it had been burned.

“Sorry,” she muttered hastily, cringing at her knee jerk reaction to someone getting too close. “I didn’t mean - I’m not used to -”  _ Fuck it, _ if she couldn’t find the words to make him understand, perhaps something else was called for? She lowered her palm back towards his and gently stroked his knuckles with her thumb.

“It’s fine, Rey.”

Her gaze darted towards his and foolish as it was, she found herself believing him. Tears prickled the backs of her eyes and she had to rush forward and tell him something quickly before the moment was gone, while she was still strong.

“You have a family,” she gushed. “They try to reach out to you. I’ve seen you reject their calls, I’ve heard the way you talk about them, I know you were supposed to be home with them today.” She forced a lump down her throat, swollen with fear, and staggered on. “I hate that you probably don’t know how lucky you are. I wish someone wanted me. I wish someone badgered me for a conversation about my week or told me off for getting too drunk or asked me what I wanted for christmas. I  _ wish _ I had that. Sometimes, Ben, I find it really, really difficult that you  _ have _ that and you don’t understand what a fucking gift it is. I know things can’t always be perfect between families, I  _ know _ that, but if my parents turned up out of the clear blue fucking sky, I’d scream at them for all of five minutes and then I’d hold on to them and never let go. You don’t know what it’s like to have to wait for someone to remember you exist.”

His eyes were shrouded in darkness.

“I do actually,” he breathed, no hint of anger in his tone, just a sliver of acute sorrow. It was a look that split her soul.

“How?”

The muscles of Ben’s face tightened, rigid beneath his pale skin flecked with dark freckles and moles. He looked at their intertwined fingers as he explained, “They didn’t have a great deal of time for me, growing up. I acted out a lot because I felt like it was the only way anyone would…” He paused, rubbing the side of his thumb against hers. “Instead, they sent me off to boarding school to ‘buck up my ideas’.” He snorted bitterly. “Get me out of their hair, more like.”

“I’m sorry,” she breathed.

“It’s okay. I just don’t think I can -” He sighed, jaw tense. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget it.”

Rey’s breathing felt uneven. She didn’t want him to think that she was undermining or minimizing his pain, the trauma he must have experienced growing up, especially because now she could see so clearly that for all of her indulgent thoughts about how she was the only one out of the pair of them to have experienced true loneliness that she had been gravely mistaken, there was still one key difference in their stories.

“Okay,” she breathed. “I get that. That’s awful. I’m so sorry they pushed you away. I’m sorry that  _ I  _ pushed you away, knowing what I do now… But, Ben, they  _ want _ you. It might be better later than never, but they  _ want  _ you. I’ve seen you ignoring their calls, their texts. Do you understand why that’s something I find really difficult to watch?”

“It’s complicated, Rey.”

“You have a  _ family.” _ She said meaningfully, trying to make him understand. “I have  _ no one _ .”

He gazed up at her and suddenly, she realised that she had let go of his hand and was on her feet.  _ When did that happen? _

He examined her, gaze roving up from her clenched fists to her torso to her taught jaw. “I want to be your someone,” he said.

She blinked. The rising tension in her chest melted away, leaving nothing but tenderness in its wake.

“I need you to try with your parents.”

“Why?” His voice was gravelly.

“Because if you can’t at least  _ try  _ to forgive them for the things that they did, how can you even hope to care unconditionally for someone else?” she asked. His mouth worked. 

“I don’t know,” he replied, flexing his jaw. “I just do.”

He shrugged and stared up at her with open palms resting on his knees. Rey turned her head away, pinching her eyes closed. The next words he spoke to her were flecked with injury. “Is that what you need, Rey? Do I still have to prove myself to you?”

She strained against the innate reaction to shy away from all of this, from hurting him with her honesty, from showing how completely vulnerable and laid bare she felt by asking for what she needed but she knew she had to see this through; it was too important to her to know that people could love each other regardless of the hurt they caused. If that wasn’t possible, then what was the point of ever admitting to herself that she -

“I can’t square with the fact that they want you and love you and you’re rejecting them because of an old grudge. I just need to know that you can forgive them, regardless of all the human shit, the mistakes and vices and stupidity. I want to see that you can - you can -” She tried to finish the sentence. She really did. But her words were thick in her mouth and her cheeks were flushed and wet and a defensive roadblock had slammed down in her brain with absolute finality.

He took a deep breath and leaned slowly towards her, elbow resting on the counter to support himself.

“That I could forgive  _ you _ if it came to it?” he asked softly. Rey’s chest constricted and if it weren’t for how piercingly grounding his gaze was, she would have had to look away. He studied her and went on sadly, “You didn’t do anything wrong, Rey. No matter what, always remember that you did nothing bad to drive your parents away. You’re good. You will always be worthy of forgiveness - even if you killed someone or, I don’t know, kill someone’s  _ cat _ .” He shrugged comically. “If you steal the crown jewels or the Mona Lisa or - a _ different  _ cat.” His shoulders relaxed and his voice was soft and earnest when he said, “Even if you hurt me. Because you  _ could _ .”

She choked on a sob, couldn’t help it. He went on. “You want to know you can trust me?”

She wrinkled her nose and nodded.

“That’s just what love is, isn’t it?” he said wryly. “Trusting all the parts of yourself with someone else and hoping to fuck they won’t leave you hanging out to dry.”

There it was. That word. He had finally managed to say it without interruption or hesitation.

_ Love. _

Why was her heart  _ singing _ when all she could think was  _ danger danger _ ?

“I mean -” he stammered, eyes wide, and Rey thought that he was remembering the anxiety attack she’d experienced yesterday the first time he’d almost said it. “I  _ mean _ -”

She called on her courage and placed a hand over his, saying in a reedy voice, “So you reckon loving someone is just the same as trusting them implicitly, right?”

He sucked in a breath, watching her cagily. “It makes sense to me,” he said quietly.

She watched him, studied his lovely features and shimmering eyes and the look behind them and all of the parts of him that made her toes curl and her stomach flip and her fingers tremble; all of his component parts were a blessing, and she had been basking in the light of it for so long without ever truly acknowledging it to herself.

She curled her fingers more tightly around his own and fixed him with a determined stare. She opened her mouth. The words spilled out.

“Then I trust you.”

*

They continued to listen to Ben’s playlist while washing their breakfast plates. Every time she stole a glance over her shoulder, Rey saw a small smile lingering on his face. Once he caught her eye and the look widened into a full on grin of -

_ Love. _

With her hands in the warm, soapy water and only a few pieces of cutlery left to sponge off, Rey felt a pair of strong arms encircle her waist and she was powerless to stop the beam from spreading across her own features as her eyes closed happily and she lay her head back to rest against his chest. He kissed her temple, ghosting his fingers up and down her belly.

“I like you in my clothes,” he rumbled, dipping his mouth to the soft skin of her neck. She let out a contented hum, feeling a spark of heat between her thighs.

“They drown me,” she said.

“You drown me,” he replied.

His right hand slipped lower, lower to the hem of his shirt and sought out the bare skin and fuzz beneath, causing a keening noise rising up in her chest and escaping from her slightly parted lips. He groaned. “Never wear underwear again.”

“Okay,” she breathed.

He played with her for a while with his long fingers, parting her folds and caressing her clitoris, and her hips bucked instinctively backwards against his crotch. His other hand resting on her stomach held her in place. Then he stepped away, his warm touch vanishing and it was all she could do not to yelp as her hands gripped the rim of the sink.

“Get on the counter.” His voice held that commanding edge and another shiver of glittering warmth pulsed in her abdomen. She turned to face him, to meet his eyes before she did as instructed, moving to the island and pulling herself up, the cool black marble causing goosebumps to spring up on her skin. He stood just out of arm's length, examining her for what seemed like an unbearable amount of time but could only have been a few seconds in reality. When he stepped towards her, he parted her knees with firm hands and stood between them, moving in to kiss her. Her arms flew up to wrap around his neck as she returned it ferociously, suddenly absolutely voracious for his touch. A hand trailed up her inner thigh and his fingers worked its way up and down her centre as moaned into his mouth.

Possessiveness struck her like a bolt of lightning; he, this, was all  _ hers. _ He was her  _ someone _ , her north star, her new constant, the one she had been waiting for her whole life. She was still afraid in so many ways but now she knew that it was only of ever being without him - she had fallen too far into this man now and she would be damned if he ever went away. With a spike of  _ want _ , she bit down on his lower lip and he grunted in pain, pulling away from her and surveying her with darkening eyes.

“You’re cruising for a bruising, girl.”

_ Fuck _ , how her heart  _ raced _ .

“I’m sorry,” she breathed raggedly, excitement flaring in her stomach.

“I bet you are. Come on, flip over.”

She scrambled off the counter and turned her back to him, bending over with her toes barely touching the kitchen floor. Her hips pressed into the island as he stepped forward and practically covered her body with his own; she could feel his erection pressing into her backside, so large and hard that it momentarily took her breath away.

He took both of her wrists in just one of his big hands and placed them flat on the surface above her head, pressing her chest down to lay on the marble with a palm in between her shoulder blades. She shuddered as he nudged her legs further apart with his feet and whispered right into her ear, “Relax.”

As he pushed his shirt up over her buttocks to reveal her nakedness to him, she gasped out suddenly, “Ben -”

“Yeh?” he asked, a warm palm covering one of her exposed cheeks. His voice was gentle, inquisitive, waiting for her to say something but to her surprise, no words came to her. What had she been trying to say?

After a few moments of silence, she felt him lean forward and tug down the neck of his shirt to reveal the top of her spine, flesh tingling a little at the cool air. He pressed a soft kiss there,  _ so  _ tender, so -

_ Loving. _

“I’ve got you,” he murmured against her skin. He slid a long finger inside her, slowly, torturously and her lungs ceased to work as it went deeper. “I’ve got you _. _ ”

It was the sweetest finger-fuck she had ever received. Ben wound his digits in and out of her with gorgeous precision, building her arousal up as she moaned and whined and panted. Once she tried to push herself up off the counter, desperate to get closer, to have  _ more _ , but he gently pushed her back down with his free hand and she practically sobbed.

“You keep making those pretty little noises and it’s getting me really fucking hard, girl.” Ben’s voice was gravelly,  _ reverent _ . “Don’t ever hold back on me, yeh?”

“Yeh,” she groaned and the word lasted several syllables longer than it usually would have if he hadn’t been ploughing her cunt with his hand.

“Fuck, Rey,” he breathed jaggedly. Suddenly, his mouth was between her legs too, lapping at the wetness elicited by his ministrations and then his tongue was lapping the insides of her thighs, up the swell of her buttocks, down -

The noise she made was completely alien to her, a strangled half-bark, half-growl as the tip of his tongue swiped around the ring of her anus, kissing and licking her sphincter with apparent relish. Once upon a time, Rey thought in amongst  _ all this bliss _ , she might have punched him in the face for such behaviour but right here, right now -

“Ben, that’s so nice, oh god, baby, it’s so, so good, oh my fucking god -”

He hummed into her ass, preoccupied and seemingly enjoying himself  _ a lot _ .

Like a wave, the first swells of her orgasm rushed her and she felt herself clench down around his fingers. “Oh fuck, Ben, I -”

Without hesitation, he withdrew his face and hands from her core and Rey honestly thought for a moment that she was going to cry before she felt the blessed velvety head of his cock at her entrance.

“Not without me,” he grunted and pushed her cheeks apart with a hand splayed on each before he  _ pressed - _

_ Have I blacked out? _ she thought. She heard herself grind out a long, shuddering sigh, heard the animal noise coming from Ben’s throat, but all she saw were little stars in front of her eyes, tiny dancing lights that popped and fizzed. Her whole centre of gravity revolved around the sumptuous fullness in her pussy and as he began to move, her entire world became the pleasure, the visceral slip and slide of him inside her, around her, everywhere.

“Fuck  _ me _ , I not gonna last,” Ben hissed and unless she was imagining it, he sounded almost emotional. “You’re so fucking perfect, you’re so fucking perfect.”

“I’m yours,” she choked, gripping on to the counter top as he fucked her ferociously from behind. “I’m yours, I’m yours, Ben.” What was she saying? She didn’t know why, only that it was the filthiest fucking thing she had ever said and he increased his pace.

“Rey, cum for me, please, please,  _ baby girl _ , please -”

The orgasm cracked her spine and splintered her chest cavity and relieved her of all control over her limbs. She heard her open mouth’s long, drawn out wail, the feeling of shattering around Ben’s cock all-encompassing to the point that there was quite literally nothing else left in the world but him;  _ he _ was her world, he was  _ everything _ .

As she drifted down,, exhausted, shivering with aftershocks, he collapsed on top of her and she knew that he, too, had cum, his broad chest expanding against her back like the swelling of the universe. His forehead was slick with sweat as he rested his scalp beside her face on the cool marble, damp, dark curls falling over his closed eyes as he panted.

She watched him with her mouth hanging open slightly and without thought or consequence or fear, she said with more sincerity than she’d ever said anything before:

“I love you.”

His eyes opened and his beautiful lips lilted up in a tired, happy smile. His hot breath ghosted her cheeks as he whispered, “I know,” and kissed her tenderly.

He seemed to be recovering much more rapidly than Rey, who was failing to regain her composure with alarming sluggishness. He placed gentle hands on her shoulders and lifted her up slightly, moving to cradle her head as it simply lolled with the movement.

“Hey,” he murmured softly. “Hey, let me look at you, girl.” She took a deep breath, attempting to corral her senses, and held his half-concerned, half-wonderstruck gaze. “You’re okay, yeh?”

She hummed low in her throat because she was absolutely  _ sublime, _ being held up in his strong arms after he’d turned her entire world on its head then put it back again in the space of what could only have been half an hour or so.

“Yeh?” he was laughing breathlessly now, beaming lovingly at her. He pulled her up against his chest and her knees nearly buckled. “Woah, woah,” he muttered, forearms tightening around her chest to hold her up. “Can you stand?”

She shook her head, sighing blissfully. In a moment, he had her legs crooked over one of his arms and her torso cradled in the other. She felt the weightlessness of being carried by him, though she thought she had been floating for a while now. Gently, he lay her down on the leather sofa which creaked slightly beneath her frame. Kneeling beside her, he stroked her temples with his knuckles.

“Sweet baby Jesus,” she sighed and Ben snorted.

“Hey, not on his birthday.”

There was a pause as she gazed lazily at him, his cheek pressed against her stomach.

“Thank you for that.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Thank  _ you. _ ”

“And for…” She hesitated, turning the words over in her mouth. “For not letting me spend Christmas alone.”

He turned his head to press a kiss against her belly, still draped in his shirt.

“My pleasure.” Then he said, “Shit!”

“What?” she asked, eyes widening a little in alarm.

“I forgot your fucking present.”

Rey burst out laughing.

*

A few days later when they were back in London, curled up on the sofa in her apartment together beneath a blanket, she peeled back the wrapping paper of the gift he had given her.

It was a simple thin gold chain, with two sparkling gemstones nestled side by side in the necklace’s centre: one red and one blue.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Here's your playlist!
> 
> Boyfriend - Best Coast
> 
> Good as Hell - Lizzo
> 
> Broke - Samm Henshaw
> 
> Party Girl - StaySolidRocky
> 
> Circles - Mac Miller
> 
> And finally, though this fic was titled a year ago, once it was finished I did a quick google search to see if there were any decent songs called 'The Getaway' and lo and behold, RHCP have a cracking jam of that name:  
> The Getaway - Red Hot Chili Peppers


End file.
